Another Earthquake...where is God?

Another devastating earthquake has hit Indonesia - with the numbers of dead and injured still rising. (For more details, click here for the BBC coverage - and from where the image to the left is copied). Once again, we are tempted to ask, 'where is God?'...or at least 'how could God allow such a tragedy to occur?'

Part of the answer is that God is in the cries for economic justice that are issued (and have been issued for centuries) from the churches of the world. God is in the demand that we should build good quality, earthquake-proof housing in all danger spots...not just on the West Coast of the USA. God is in the demand that dis-honest property developers should not be permitted to throw up shoddy housing made with crumbling cement, by making 'back-handers' to local planning officials.

God is also present in the efforts of the relief workers, and the donations from the rest of the world to help rebuild lives.

But there is another sense in which God is present too. There's a famous story of a old Jewish man in a Nazi concentration camp, forced with his compatriots to walk past the recently tortured and then hung bodies of other prisoners. As they filed past, some guards jeered at them, "Where is your God now then?!" The old man, looking upon the bodies of the dead, said "there He is".

The Jewish tradition, and even more so the Christian tradition following Jesus' death on the cross, proclaims that it is in life's darkest hours that God may be found. It is almost as if God
allows suffering to happen because he knows that it is only when we are at our lowest ebb, when we have run out of our own resources and have to depend entirely on God...it is only then that some of us are able to become aware of God.

Please join me in praying that the Indonesian quake will not only spur the world's leaders to greater efforts for justice, but that those who have been worst affected will, somehow, by His grace, be able to find God amid the chaos.